Monday, July 7, 2014

Ride the High Country (MGM, 1962)

Integrity and
moral courage

Sam Peckinpah
loved the theme of the ‘end of the West’. Perhaps because he was often in his
youth in the 1930s and 40s on his grandfather’s post-West ranch at Coarsegold
in California (which is what he named the camp in Ride the High Country) among nostalgic survivors. He was always
fascinated by tales of the old Wild West days.

Sam

There is something elegiac about
his Westerns. The most obviously example is The Wild Bunch,
about aging gunfighters bewildered in a new, modern era of automobiles and
airplanes, in a time that didn’t want them. Or The Ballad of CableHogue
where once again the car symbolizes the end of it all, as it does, indeed, in
the first reel of Ride the High Country.
So to entice two older famous Western stars (Joel McCrea, 57 and Randolph
Scott, 63) out of retirement, or Western inactivity anyway, to make a film about
two men past their prime trying to revive the past and maintain the old Western
code of honor was a master stroke.

Guns in the Afternoon was an alternative title

Gary Cooper was to have been Judd, you know, had he
not died in 1961. He would have been perfect but it must be said that McCrea
was outstanding: upright, tough and steely with integrity. An equally fine
Scott is Gil Westrum, just as tough but roguish, charming and not quite so full
of integrity – in fact larcenous. They play against and complement each other.
Both performances were Oscarable. It is said they were originally cast the
other way round but both felt more comfortable with Scott as Westrum and McCrea
as Judd. They were certainly right.

One of the best aspects of Ride the High Country is undoubtedly the interplay of McCrea and
Scott, the former stoic, flinty, scriptural, lonely, with all the most stirring
speeches, the latter happy-go-lucky, with wavering moral purpose, essentially
pathetic; he has the quips and good one-liners. Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott
were never better.

Wonderful together

According to Burt Kennedy, they flipped a coin in a
restaurant for top billing. They are mentioned pretty well equally on the
posters, though Scott’s name comes first.

Of course Peckinpah started making film Westerns (as
opposed to TV) right at the time that the ‘end of the West’ became a major
theme. The Magnificent
Seven, which is about nothing else, came out in 1960 and Western
after Western in the early 60s repeated this storyline. Westerns that didn’t
question themselves were 1950s old hat, which is why the 50s are the high water
mark of the genre. Peckinpah was only in his mid-30s when he started making
Western movies but he contributed to and reinforced this theme. Call it
revisionist if you want, many people do, though I tend to reserve that term for
movies like Soldier Blue orLittle Big Man
or Doc
from the 70s onward which almost mocked the genre or which turned its basic
precepts upside down by debunking the heroes of the West or making the Indians
the good guys.

Peckinpah used the same actors again and
again. As with John Ford, a kind of stock company developed. Among
this crew were RG Armstrong, LQ Jones and Warren Oates, all very good indeed,
and they all appear here. Sam had got to know them all in TV westerns. RG was
in this one, Major Dundee,
Cable Hogue andPat Garrett.
LQ was in this one, Dundee, The Wild
Bunch, Cable Hogue and Pat Garrett.
Oates was in this one, Dundee, The Wild
Bunch and of course starred in Alfredo Garcia.

Warren Oates

The same went for cinematographers. The great Lucien Ballard,
who shot this one, had worked on The
Westerner for TV and also later photographed the big-screen spin-off Will Penny.
Sam had him back after High Country
for The Wild Bunch, Cable Hogue andJunior Bonnerand had tried to get himfor Dundee. That’s sticking together!
Photographed partly on location in the Inyo National Forest, Ride the High Country is luminous, vivid
and visually memorable.

Written by NB Stone, a specialist in TV Westerns, with
very large contributions from Peckinpah (McCrea thought as much as 80%) and
some from Bob Williams, who had a vast experience since the early 40s of almost
exclusively B-Westerns, the screenplay is tight, professional and workmanlike,
with occasional flashes of brilliance. “The only law up there is too drunk to
hit the ground with his hat.” Or again, “All I want,” says Judd, quietly, “is
to enter my house justified.” It is the credo of the hero and the theme of the
film..

The support acting is outstanding. I would mention in particular RG Armstrong.
I have said elsewhere that Armstrong’s greatest role was as Ollinger in Pat Garrett, and again that it was
Boyd in From Hell to Texas, but the reality is
that each film you see him in, you think that one is his best performance.
Here, he is a tormented preacher who, we infer, has killed his wife for
infidelity (she is referred to as a harlot on her grave marker) and who
represses and strikes the daughter he really loves but cannot show it..

Edgar Buchananis also excellent as
the sad, broken-down drunk judge. What a fine actor he was. And of course he rather specialized in Western judges. LQ Jones and Warren
Oates are two of the five murderous and repulsive white-trash Hammond brothers
and they are extremely good. Ron Starr does well as Heck Longtree, the young
sidekick of Westrum who learns decency from Judd.

“Pick that up,” orders Judd as Heck throws down some paper. “These mountains
don’t need your trash.” A very modern eco-message for the early 60s.

Top-notch acting.

Shot in an uncharacteristic 26 days and only $60,000
over budget (which for Peckinpah was really under), the movie is tight, taut
and tense.

It was Randolph Scott’s last film and what a way to
go out. It should really have been Joel McCrea’s; he did a couple more not very
good ones and that was probably a mistake. But two great cowboy heroes of the
silver screen found a perfectly splendid film to say goodbye with.

MGM's Joe Vogel told Peckinpah he thought it was the
worst film he'd ever seen and didn't want to release it. But it was in the can
and MGM needed product. They tried to hide it on a double bill with
Victor Mature in The Tartars. Good grief. But despite the MGM execs it was a
fabulous film. Newsweek said it was "pure gold", Variety
thought that Scott and McCrea were "better than they have ever been"
and the movie won a number of awards at film festivals.

If the film is about integrity and moral courage, it
is also essentially about solitude. It is, in fact, a masterpiece.